You are here: St Kilda Today > Ranger's Diary


Using technology to 'reconstruct' blackhouse G

29 January 2012

Like many people, my fascination with St Kilda began when I was small. My father, as an avid and adventurous sea kayaker, had attempted to make the 40 mile crossing from the Monarch Isles to Hirta on a number of occasions. As a child I remember listening intently as he told me stories about the community who used to live there.

It wasn’t until my final year as an undergraduate in archaeology at the University of Glasgow that I re-kindled my interest in the archipelago when the opportunity arose to write my dissertation on the iconic cleits which pepper the slopes of Hirta and Boreray in their hundreds. Following months of pouring over maps and devouring any St Kilda related book I could get my hands on I decided I’d put too much of my heart and soul into my dissertation not to visit before I handed in my final paper. So on a chilly spring morning of April 2009 I boarded the first boat of the season and embarked on what would be my first trip to the island. I was joined by my father who was certainly not going to miss an opportunity to explore the island which for so many years had remained frustratingly distant through a pair of binoculars as the bad weather rolled in!

Alice surveying cleitsPhoto: Conducting my survey of the cleits on my first trip to Hirta in 2009

The week we spent on Hirta was a fantastic experience, we both talked of how it was a once in a lifetime trip and I certainly never expected to have the opportunity to return again. But in late 2010 I began my PhD at the Glasgow School of Art’s Digital Design Studio working as part of the Scottish Ten Project. The project forms a partnership between the GSA and Historic Scotland whose joint aim is to digitally document the five UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Scotland together with five international sites. The Scottish sites include Old and New Town Edinburgh, The Antonine Wall, Neolithic Orkney, New Lanark and of course, St Kilda.

In the years since I had first visited the island I had spent my time specialising in 3D visualisation and animation for archaeology down at the University of Southampton. If you have ever watched Time Team or Digging for Britain and marvelled at how they can reconstruct a whole village from one tiny piece of pottery and a few holes in the ground...well, that’s more or less what I do!

Laser scanner used to survey the structures on St KildaPhoto: Digital survey of The Street using a Leica C10 laser scanner which generates a 3D point cloud

For two weeks between June and July 2011 I joined the Scottish Ten team on St Kilda to digitally document select areas on Hirta. We used a combination of different scanners and photogrammetry rigs to record the structures within the head dyke, some of the field systems in An Lag above the village and the Amazon’s House over in Glen Mor. In addition to the wide-scale scanning of the Village with terrestrial scanners, an Artec hand-held scanner was used to record a number of culturally significant features in detail, including the three carved stone crosses. On a much larger scale, a long range mining scanner was brought in during the second week on the island which was used to capture the surrounding terrain in detail. The final result being the creation of, in effect, a ‘virtual St Kilda’, an exceptionally accurate digital model of the site which can be used to better conserve and manage this unique place.

Scanning the inside of structuresPhoto: As the project PhD student I get all the best jobs! Scanning in the ankle deep mud of Calum Mor's House in the Village Bay

After an unforgettable fortnight we returned to Glasgow to begin processing the data we had collected. Using a portion of the scan data for the purpose of my research I began to reconstruct one of the blackhouses on the Village Street which date to the 1830s.  Point cloud 3D surface model of structures

Solid model of the street generated from the point cloud modelPhotos: The scanners generate 3D surface models of the structures. In the top image we see the point cloud,and in the bottom image the solid model generated from this point data. We call this stage 'meshing'. Images reproduced courtesy of the CDDV (Centre for Digital Documentation and Visualisation)

Archaeological reconstruction is a tricky business. If done correctly a single image can spark academic debate, raise new questions about a site or simply promote a greater understanding of the archaeological evidence to a general audience, perhaps even inspire them to learn more about that subject. For me, visualising a site as it would have been in the past is not just about presenting the evidence we have, that can be done in a museum display or in an academic paper; it’s about tying together those pieces of evidence to make a compelling story. With my work producing an ‘authentic’ visualisation is not solely about accuracy, it’s about creating a believable sense of place and atmosphere.
BlackhousePhoto: A view inside my smoky reconstructed blackhouse

With the blackhouse I wanted to construct a narrative around the 18th and 19th century written accounts of the island together with the vast early 20th century photographic archive. The model is still ongoing, but the scene is beginning to take shape. We see a woman (I like to think its Mrs Gillies from the archive photographs!) sat at the central hearth boiling a kettle, surrounded by various items essential to life on the island. A quern stone sits near the door ready to grind cereals into flour. Ropes lay waiting to be untangled and fish hang from the ceiling to smoke over the peat fire. As all these little details are added, it’s beginning to feel a lot like home. The more depth the image has the more an audience will be drawn in and will engage with the site.Blackhouse G reconstructions - byrePhoto: Another view of the blackhouse G reconstruction produced using 3ds Max software, showing the family's cow in the byre

In the coming weeks I hope to finalise my reconstruction simply by adding more objects to the scene, more mess, more life. So that what you will see is not just a virtual museum display of this aspect of St Kildan life, but something which feels closer to a window on a past reality. View of the reconstructed blackhouse on the StreetPhoto: And finally, a view of my reconstructed blackhouse where it would have sat on The Street, the surrounding terrain was generated and textured from the laser scan and photogrammetry data by Alistair Rawlinson of the CDDV


To read more about the St Kildan blackhouse, and my current research projects you can follow my blog here (www.digitaldirtvirtualpasts.wordpress.com) and find out about the Scottish Ten project here (www.scottishten.org).

Alice Watterson

 

  

Puffins in the Puffinn – a work of art, but who was the artist?

26 January 2012

One colourful and popular feature of the Puffinn is the mural painted on the upper reaches of the bar. Every time I look at it I see details that I haven’t noticed before – it really is quite a delightful piece of art!  I began to ask questions about the mural and soon realised that we don’t know very much and we would like to know more.

We think that the artist was ‘Mick Reed’ and that he painted the puffins in 1992. But, we know very little about him or his reasons for creating it. Puffin in the Puffinn - fish and signature

Do you know who Mick Reed was - a visitor to the island or maybe someone from the services who was based there?

Puffin in the Puffinn - birds and islands

 

 

Do you know exactly when it was painted? How long did it take? Did you help?

Do you have pictures of it being painted?

We are also curious to know what was on the wall previously, was it just a blank space?

Puffin in the Puffinn - birds and boreray

(photos: M.MacCormick)

 

If you have any information about the puffin mural in the Puffinn, we would be very pleased to hear!

Please send emails to: GPrior@nts.org.uk

 

Thanks in advance,

Gina

Previous Entries

13 January 2012St Kilda mail washes up on Norway
22 December 2011Top award
7 December 2011Wind, rain, hail and snow – winter time on Kilda!
7 December 2011Seals sing
20 November 2011Love is in the air (sheep rut)
13 November 2011On St Kilda, We Remember
3 November 2011Chopper moves blocks
1 November 2011Fright night!
30 October 2011Smallest seabird in the world
30 October 2011Tangled
5 October 2011From the west
2 October 2011Found a shearwater
1 October 2011Fog and radio hams
24 September 2011Colour on a grey day
16 September 2011Petrels and mice
15 September 2011Birds passing through
13 September 2011Water and waves
12 September 2011Arctic skua breeding success
12 September 2011Summer is at an end
29 August 2011A busy season of seabird surveys
14 August 2011Nine sheep on a cleit
5 August 2011Artists and culture
13 July 2011St Kilda summer
26 June 2011Work Parties farewell
26 June 2011Village Bay's stone tools
20 June 2011Colourful skuas
19 June 2011Counting birds
7 June 2011
5 June 2011Busy boats
25 May 2011Kilda sunrise
23 May 2011Some unexpected visitors
17 May 2011Kilda Rocks
13 May 2011Lots of lambs
13 May 2011Some unusual birds
9 May 2011Over the sea from Skye
8 May 2011Then there were two
30 April 2011Royal Wedding Day on St Kilda
27 April 2011Back with the Swallows
7 October 2010At the end of the day
3 September 2010Round up of the season
21 August 2010An ancient gift to the fairies?
14 July 2010Calling all Kilda experts
12 July 2010Another Blow In
23 June 2010Getting back
3 June 2010settling in
30 April 2010I'm just here (Archaeologist )
20 April 2010I'm Back!
1 September 2009Breath of winter
29 August 2009St Kilda Day
14 July 2009It's a hard life.
7 July 2009Breeding Birds
2 July 2009Birds Birds Everywhere!
18 June 2009Here they come...
13 June 2009Beachclean 2009
15 May 2009Death From Above!!!
10 October 2008And now, the end is near…….
29 September 2008Shutting up shop
28 August 2008Puffling Round-Up
6 August 2008Hiding places, old and new
17 July 2008BACK TO NORMAL
25 June 2008Water, water everywhere…….
9 June 2008Things have hotted up and dried up
31 May 2008The excitement of stray visitors
28 May 2008A month of firsts for the archaeologist
8 May 2008THINGS ARE HOTTING UP!
25 April 2008First impressions - It's All Gone Green
16 April 2008Spring migrants
5 February 2008Rat threat to St Kilda
16 January 2008Manse Mysteries
6 December 2007Remembrance Service
26 September 2007Last words
23 September 2007Found already!!!
17 September 2007I name this ship.....
8 September 2007Sheep catch 2007
30 August 2007Ups and downs in the seabird season
13 August 2007Cleit of the week...
10 August 2007Nights at Carn Mor
25 July 2007Walls, walls, walls
12 July 2007Anyone for a glass of Revoltosa?
22 June 2007Bonxie chicks & Brocken spectres - First impressions from the Petrel-Skua Team
8 June 2007Sad end for a fulmar
24 May 2007New archaeological survey of St Kilda
2 May 2007Springtime on Kilda
16 April 2007Rocks away!
2 April 2007A 50th Celebration
6 February 2007A winter wonderland
26 September 2006Another season over
25 September 2006Last visitors of the season
11 September 2006The hop, skip and a jump to Dun
5 September 2006“I’ve started so I’ll finish”
28 August 2006Big red boats
19 August 2006Fine dining, blood, sweat, and tears
9 August 2006Puffins, Kittiwakes and other news
12 July 2006Seabirds, belly dancing and Viking snails
15 June 2006The Army Invade St Kilda
2 May 2006We're back!!! St Kilda 2006
21 October 2005The 75th Anniversary mailboat has been found!!!
8 September 2005Now that’s entertainment (magic)
1 September 2005The 75th Anniversary of the last evacuation of islanders from St Kilda, August 29th 2005
30 August 2005Norman Gillies and Family return
12 August 2005Wacky races
4 August 2005'Christopher' Wren Inspects Work On Hirta Kirk
25 July 2005Poor year for puffins
15 July 2005New Gaelic Bible for the Kirk
8 July 2005Working the night shift at St Kilda’s petrel station
28 June 2005The view from my window
20 June 2005Archaeology goes down the drain
16 June 2005End of an Era for St Kilda archaeology
8 June 2005John, Paul, Ringo and Toastcrumb
2 June 2005Normal service is resumed...
21 September 2004Still over 60 knots
21 September 2004And so to bed..
7 September 2004What a difference a day makes..
6 September 2004By Royal Appointment
30 August 200429th August 1930
21 August 2004Soay sheep research
12 August 2004A lucky escape
9 August 2004Repairing the Dry Burn
26 July 2004Digging for fairies
1 July 2004First catch your bonxie....